Posted
by
msmash
on Monday November 21, 2016 @03:20PM
from the making-amendments dept.

Nathan McAlone, reporting for BusinessInsider: Following criticism over fake news on its platform, Google plans to remove its "In the news" section from the top of desktop search results in a matter of weeks, according to a source familiar with the matter. It will be replaced by a carousel of "Top stories" similar to what now exists on mobile. This move had been planned for quite some time, the source said. The removal of the word "news" will, hopefully, help draw a sharper line between Google's human-vetted Google News product, and its main search product. Earlier this month, Google faced scrutiny when one of its top results for "final election count" was fake news. The top result in Google Search's "In the news" section was a Wordpress blog named "70 News," which falsely claimed Trump won the popular vote by a margin of almost 700,000. He didn't.

I think that personalized news sites are orwellian and they create an echo chamber. You can't form an informed opinion if you only get news that already have your opinion.

Instead of banning these sites out of this reason like it should be done, they are removed because the filters are not conforming with what SJWs think is non-"offensive" articles.

Its so sad that reports about Clinton's corruption is classified as fake news by the SJWs who only care about "microagressions" and "pussy grabbing" instead of real crime.

Similarly the undercover footage that proved how the democrats have rigged elections (by abusing tolerant state laws and driving over voters with busses) and paid protesters since decades went almost unnoticed by the mainstream media (only Fox reported about it I think).

I don't agree with republicans about most of their issues, and clearly Clinton was the candidate I was rooting for, but in this election almost all of the mainstream media have supported clinton, and I still think that journalism critical about the democrats should be allowed.

And Sexual Harassment is a crime. Unless the Chief Executive who is sexually harassing subordinates* in his office happens to be popular with Mainstream Feminists.

(* any time there is a power dynamic, i.e. the head of an organization is engaging in sexual acts with an intern, it fits the definition of sexual harassment. Except when it's somebody special. See above paragraph)

On the surface, like most leftist arguments I believe most people agree that sexual assault is a crime. That said, the definition of sexual assault has been expanded to include telling someone they are attractive, kissing them on the cheek, and in extreme cases women who regret their decision the next day.

Hate to tell you this buddy, but you are guilty of sexual assault too. Your partners have not yet decided to press charges, but you are absolutely guilty due to the broad definitions placed on the term.

That said, the definition of sexual assault has been expanded to include telling someone they are attractive, kissing them on the cheek, and in extreme cases women who regret their decision the next day.

What does that have to do with anything? If you walk up to a woman you don't know and grab her crotch, is that sexual assault or not? Has that ever not been sexual assault?

Is a groupie guilty of sexual assault when they try to sleep with band members, actors, actresses? How about a more general woman who understands how to use sex appeal trying to sleep with people in power positions to get power? It is not a one sided issue, and you can't seem to follow a simple 30 second conversation. I have no confidence that you can see both sides of the claim.

Is a groupie guilty of sexual assault when they try to sleep with band members, actors, actresses?

Did the groupie grab the crotch of the band member/actor/actress without permission? Then, yes.

How about a more general woman who understands how to use sex appeal trying to sleep with people in power positions to get power?

Did the "more general woman" grab the crotch of someone "in power positions" without permission? Then, yes.

It is not a one sided issue, and you can't seem to follow a simple 30 second conversation.

No, it is you who seems interested in derailing a conversation by introducing irrelevant details into a conversation that's about something different. Yes, "sexual assault" might be ambiguous in some cases -- I don't think anyone here is denying that there can be ambiguity in personal interactions sometime

A groupie hanging with musicians offering sex is not committing sexual assault any more than the musician who sleeps with the groupie. It's not a one or the other thing, and rarely ever is. That is _YOUR_ logic failure, not mine. If real world circumstances "derail" the conversation it simply demonstrates your lack of ability to think and reason.

A groupie hanging with musicians offering sex is not committing sexual assault any more than the musician who sleeps with the groupie.

Let's try again, shall we: If the groupie GRABS THE CROTCH of the musician WITHOUT THEIR PERMISSION, that is sexual assault. Period.

"Offering sex" is different from literal unwanted physical sexual contact. When one says, "offering sex," that usually means something implies a verbal offer. Maybe a physical cue. Grabbing someone's genitals is MORE than merely "offering sex" -- it is acting with belief that the recipient already has approved the "offer."

No, you are absolutely wrong. Try a different extreme instead of a mantra chanted by morons. If you get invited to an orgy and visit the orgy, there should be the assumption that you are there for sex. Someone grabbing your private parts is not "wrong", it would be the normal given that scenario. That does not mean you can't say "no", but that you are in a situation that has an expectation that sexual contact is normalized.

If you don't want sexual contact, you would not be at the orgy. It is your decision to be there, and your decision to stay. That does not make anyone else at that event guilty of sexual assault because they are following the societal normal.

To claim that the same mentality of sexual contact can not exist outside of that extreme is simply asinine to the point of delusion/retardation. I have been hit on by women who want things. It was my choice to accept or rebuke the offers, and I'm not a person of immense wealth and power like an actor, or actress, or musician. Those type of people have tremendous amounts of pressure for sex, because sex is a method of advancement.

You can not deny that is factual, well documented human behavior and have any credibility.

The full conversation that you are talking about is Bush and Trump talking about exactly that type of woman. Trump shows his character after stepping off the bus and keeping his distance. Bush telling the woman to give Trump a hug led to Trump saying "it's okay, Ivanka lets me do that" so he tells her right away that he's spoken for.

You are a liar if you have never heard "guy talk" or "girl talk, unless perhaps you grew up a eunuch in a monastery. Even in the latter case I'm a skeptic. And yes, it seems like you have difficulty with honesty and reality.

So as someone who hangs out with swingers and actually goes to orgies, yes it is absolutely verboten to touch people without consent. It might surprise you but some people go to just hang out with friends or just watch. Sometimes they participate sometimes not. Just because you are there doesn't give other people the right to touch you. Your presence is not consent. Period. At best you will be kicked out of the party if you touch someone without permission, at worst you will get your ass kicked or have the

The full conversation that you are talking about is Bush and Trump talking about exactly that type of woman.

Really? They were talking about an entertainment anchor who was married (I'll leave it up to you to find out which one). Trump admits that he didn't get anywhere with her, that she refused him. He said he "moved on her like a bitch." So, if what you claim above is true, wouldn't he have succeeded? I mean, if that's exactly the type of woman who wants Trump to walk up and grab her pussy, wouldn't Trump have closed that particular deal? Once you reach a certain level of wealth or power, is it just assum

If you get invited to an orgy and visit the orgy, there should be the assumption that you are there for sex.

You're shifting the goalposts from our previous discussion. An "orgy" is different from someone "offering sex" which is different from randomly grabbing the crotch of a stranger without permission. Let's try to be clear about what we're talking about.

If you don't want sexual contact, you would not be at the orgy. It is your decision to be there, and your decision to stay.

Agreed. Completely different situation from walking up to a stranger and grabbing their crotch.

I have been hit on by women who want things. It was my choice to accept or rebuke the offers

Did they randomly walk up to you and grab your crotch? Or when you say "hit on," do you mean something more like verbal cues, maybe a little "dirty talk" or innue

If what Mr. Trump said was true (grabbing them by the pu**y) there would at least be a court case. Instead, what we have is a setup question in a debate from an extremely biased liberal working in media followed by a dozen accusations which don't match the statement recorded. None of those accusations, even up to 40 years old, ever came up before the debates and no charges existed until then. Those accusations are all extremely weak (you can read) so I'd say not plausible that he's guilty. That does not

And the one concrete example that Trump gave of a specific woman, who refused him, somehow does not disprove your "theory" that they are talking about "exactly that type of woman" and that "that type of woman" wants people with money or power to fuck her in order to advance her career. The only example either person gave of any individual woman was one who does not fit your ridiculous stereotype of what you imagine women to be like.

If what Mr. Trump said was true (grabbing them by the pu**y) there would at least be a court case.

Is that how it works? The only reality is what goes on inside a courtroom?

Double so when you have people like Clinton, who destroyed women her husband was guilty of sexual assaulting, telling people that they have to believe the accusations.

No, I'm sorry, that never happened. The reason I know that is because there would be a court case. The only case filed against Clinton was for sexual harassment, by Paula Jones, not sexual assault. And if Hillary had "destroyed" women that her husband was guilty of assaulting, then there would be a court case against her, too.

Because that's how reality works. Also, I've never smoked marijuana in my life, because if I had, there w

Is a groupie guilty of sexual assault when they try to sleep with band members, actors, actresses?

Are they walking up and grabbing crotches? If so, yes they are.

How about a more general woman who understands how to use sex appeal trying to sleep with people in power positions to get power?

Is she walking up and grabbing peoples' crotches? If so, then yeah she's guilty of sexual assault also.

It is not a one sided issue

It kind of is though really. The point you're trying to make is that people don't press assault charges if they welcome that behavior, but that doesn't mean it's not assault. The difference between an assault charge and getting laid is whether the other person welcomed the behavior. It's the same behavior though. Grabbing crotches in part

How about a more general woman who understands how to use sex appeal trying to sleep with people in power positions to get power?

This can get complicated. Some girls think it's ok to just grab people by the.... One girl once when my woman suit was still brand new decided that she was just going to grab me by the chest. I think she was trying to get me to sleep with her so she could attempt paternity fraud. (Which is especially hilarious because despite what feminism says, it's a bit difficult to get a girl pregnant with a woman suit.)

While the legal issues get all kinds of murky there, I can guarantee you that just grabbing peopl

On the surface, like most leftist arguments I believe most people agree that sexual assault is a crime. That said, the definition of sexual assault has been expanded to include telling someone they are attractive, kissing them on the cheek, and in extreme cases women who regret their decision the next day.

Hate to tell you this buddy, but you are guilty of sexual assault too. Your partners have not yet decided to press charges, but you are absolutely guilty due to the broad definitions placed on the term.

Sorry but this is absolute bollocks. The legal definition of sexual assault has not changed.

Your beleifs are the result of fake news. My favourite example is the old "you cant call it a gingerbread man any more, it's a gingerbread person" trope here in the UK. Nothing showed this to be bollocks more than when I was in Morrisons one day and found these [morrisons.com]. Supermarket chains get it in the arse for almost anything, so how can one be brazenly selling Gingerbread Men... Oh my word.

On the surface, like most leftist arguments I believe most people agree that sexual assault is a crime. That said, the definition of sexual assault has been expanded to include telling someone they are attractive, kissing them on the cheek, and in extreme cases women who regret their decision the next day.

Maybe that's true, maybe that's not.

But Trump was not accused of "telling someone they are attractive, kissing them on the cheek".

He's been accused, multiple times, of kissing them full on the mouth without invitation, often involving tongue. Groping them in intimate places, and continuing while the person has been asking them to stop.

He even bragged on radio about going into women's change rooms, without any announcement, purely for the purpose of seeing the women naked.

In the real world if a woman gives you enough positive nonverbal cues you go in for a kiss or make a pass. they "let you" (if you had seen the full Trump quote) do it. It's not sexual battery, it's normal human sexuality. Asking at every turn would turn off most women because it shows a lack of confidence. The world where overt verbal consent is given at every step does not exist. Fucking deal with it.

Yeah, and some others see that "positive desire" as anything from pushiness to sexual assault. Why, it would even appear that it's impossible to have a continuous spectrum of points without confusing at least some binary classifiers! I wonder if there's some theory for that...

It's not sexual battery, it's normal human sexuality. Asking at every turn would turn off most women because it shows a lack of confidence.

Yeah, except when you are in a position of power over them, in which case you are using your position of power to force them to excuse your behavior.

Sorry, but when you have a power imbalance in a relationship, it's important to verify that what's happening is actually okay. Just assuming they'll "let you" is NOT appropriate. Forget about sexual assault for a moment -- have you never in your life been put into an awkward position by someone who had power over you, and you felt you couldn't "say no" or e

I quoted him exactly near the end of my post. I have no idea if he ACTUALLY committed sexual assault (though there clearly are some women who have accused him of it). But the way he phrased it strongly implies that he did, or at least that he was okay with it.

OR all he said was just "locker room talk" and bragging about stuff he never actually did. Which is fine (I guess), if that's what you believe. But if you take what he said literally, it's disturbing.

And oh -- I also was REPLYING to another post by the way. My post wasn't only about Trump. In general, I think the whole concept that "I think she wanted it" when she doesn't say so has historically been used to excuse way more cases of sexual abuse (or at best, unwanted sexual advances that a woman just "went along with") than it has been for cases of women who want a man to "take charge."

Finally, keep in mind that we're talking about encounters apparently between strangers. It's definitely different if you're in a relationship already with someone and sexual "touching" is okay to try to get someone in the mood or whatever. With a stranger -- particularly if you're in a position of power -- you want some sign of approval or permission before grabbing genitals. Sorry, that's not only the moral but the legal thing to do... whether you're Trump or anyone else.

Regardless, does anybody see what obsessing over a silly tape (as opposed to evidence of an actual assault) cost in terms of the election? Passed you right by it did. I mean, did you want to lose it? Just as good really, it would have been a far bigger loss if real issues were at the forefront. I guess the democrats needed the distraction, like using Monica to derail the Whitewater investigation away from actionable charges. Kinda of a reverse *wag the dog* thing.

Regardless, does anybody see what obsessing over a silly tape (as opposed to evidence of an actual assault) cost in terms of the election? Passed you right by it did. I mean, did you want to lose it? Just as good really, it would have been a far bigger loss if real issues were at the forefront.

Yes. I can see nothing amiss with a man running for the most powerful job in the world bragging about how he likes to abuse a position of power. There's no "real issues" there because we shouln't ever worry about a pr

Yeah, well, you know, pick your fights, that kind of thing. This one didn't seem to help much, did it? Evidently more people looked in their wallets and bank accounts and the "fake news" and decided that the DNC's abuses were worse. Too bad they saw the republicans as the only alternative. Together dems and reps are an abusive tag team. I tried to tell people... Vote third party/independent, but does anybody listen? Nope, they jump on my bones about it. Not much choice now but to wait and see what happens,

Hate to tell *you* this buddy, but it's not a crime if they "let you do it", which are the words Trump used in that conversation. Obnoxiously macho and bragging, sure, but he thesis was obviously that women would let him do anything he wanted. You can call that what you will ("pathetically over the top exaggeration"), but it's not bragging about assault.

The right can get away with playing fast and loose with reality. The lesson I would hope that people would take away from this election cycle is that th

None of that is relevant when dissecting Trump's own words to determine whether or not he appears to be confessing to a crime. And he did not appear to be.

On a related but separate note, it's completely fucking horrifying that wide swathes of the left have a default assumption of lack of consent when they hear these kinds of things. We saw something similar a couple years back with the "fuck her right in the pussy" meme, as if anything said in an enthusiastic or macho voice automatically implies rape.

If you cannot see how the assumption of lack of consent is absurd, try reversing the genders in your mind for a moment. Don't confuse this mental exercise with arguing that sexual assault rates are equal among the sexes; the purpose is simply to realize that your mind will automatically come up with a very plausible non-rapey interpretation of those words if we can put to one side your misandry (possibly internalized) for a moment. Or you could try imagining it was a gay man talking about another gay man a

Hm let me see. If some woman came up to me and started kissing me without my consent, yeah, I'd be pretty fucking pissed off.

Trump strongly implied there was consent, whilst giving no implication whatsoever there was a lack of consent.

Doubly so if they did it from a position of power.

Did Trump say anything implying that he was leveraging a position of power?

Don't mix up your sex scandals. I'm talking about the tape and the tape alone, because it was (as I argued weeks before the election) an embarrassingly cringy moment when I realized the left was ignoring the mountain of ammunition they had in favor of lying about what Trump had said, a lie that took me 30 seconds on Google

Yes. [dictionary.com] You want us to interpret the word "let" as "outwardly let, but they didn't really *willingly let* him because they were under coercion", which in the context of Trump's tape is a whole-cloth fabrication. There was no such implication in the tape.

it = the kissing. It's quite clear. And he said quite clearly he did not wait.

Correct. And then people like you added "for consent [be it implicit/explicit/any]" to that sentence, when there is every implication to the contrary.

This isn't my only point here, far from it, but I am curious: do you honestly believe Trump meant to sa

You keep repeating the same crap. There's more to sexual assault than having to noisily fight off an attacker.

And an assault is not implied in that tape, in any way shape and form. I'll keep repeating this (well, for one or two more replies, anyway), so long as you keep repeating your fabrications.

Apart from that bit about *not* *waiting* followed by Trump's own apologies stating his actions were NOT the same as his words.

1. Guilt by apology? That damns a lot of people right there, including a lot of rape victims. 2. He was still trying very hard to not lose the evangelical vote. There's no particular reason to suspect he was saying "I didn't really rape anyone" when the Christians were pissed off about the crudeness / fraternization /

I weas following the irrelevancies you brought up. Nice double standard by the way. If I address them I'm "jackknifing". If I don't your points are left standing. You probably think you're pretty clever for setting up a win-win scenario.

Sadly for you it doesn't work and your weak rhetorical tricks are very transparent.

Anyway there's no point in "debating" with you further (and I use that term loosely because when I talk and you blather incoherencies in reply it's n

Let me reiterate for the one or two people who may have followed this thread: I very clearly tied this back to your original claim [slashdot.org] that the "grabbing by the pussy" line was a description of a sexual assault, a claim you doubled and tripled down on.

And now you're running away, because *you* can't stay on topic (the topic being that tape and that sentence and the surrounding context) or answer a very simple question like "what do you think Trump meant?" which (counting this) I've now asked you three times

"grabbing by the pussy" line was a description of a sexual assault, a claim you doubled and tripled down on.

Combined with the "I didn't wait bit", and with his apology clearly stating his actions didn't match his words, yes.

what do you think Trump meant?

So you first say " line was a description of a sexual assault, a claim you doubled and tripled down on", but you then say "what do you think Trump meant?" which (counting this) I've now asked you three times". Make up your mind.

Combined with the "I didn't wait bit", and with his apology clearly stating his actions didn't match his words, yes.

Didn't wait for what? A "hello" ? Eye contact? How *precisely* do you imagine this implied scenario going down, this one that he was bragging about and then apologizing to the Republican base about?

I just want to you fully articulate this ridiculous, raging fantasy you obviously have going on up there... this assumption that to "not wait" can only refer to not wait *for any sort of consent or reciprocal speech/action whatsoever* and that his words can only reasonably be parsed to describe an assault.

Let's play this narrative out out with Democrats "rigging" elections. 32 governors are Republicans. House and Senate have been and continue to be both controlled by Republicans. This equates to the most failed rigging ever by Democrats. The House has 239 of 435 seats as Republicans, 55% control. The popular vote was 60 million for Republicans and 57 million for Democrats in the House equates to a 51% majority for Republicans.
The facts do not fit the rigging narrative. Republicans handed the Democrat

Winning does not obviate someone's responsibility to go after instances or cheating. Voter fraud should be tracked down and prosecuted at a level equal to treason. Whichever side commits the act. It attacks our way of life in a very fundamental way.

There problem is there is little evidence of wide spread cheating. Most of the accusations come down to and audit that found dead people being registered to vote and people registered to vote in 2 (or more) districts. Both are true statements but the people making the accusations are leaving out that both of those scenarios were happening by accident thanks to antiquated registration systems. People who moved weren't being removed from their old district when they registered at the new one and people who died weren't being properly flagged and removed. Trump was right when he said the 1.8 million dead people weren't voting for him, but they weren't voting for anyone else either.

That's not to say that it doesn't happen. There have been arrests, but people have blown the problem out of proportion and as a result, it became a law enforcement issue rather than a bureaucratic one

But what are you going to do? They already self filter anyways. I have friends online that even with Snopes articles backing me up, and a video of the original interview, still just say that some anti-Hillary article is fake news. Perhaps it actually is better for their mental health to just be allowed to never hear any opposing opinions. They will not change their opinions either way.

You are applying stereotypes here. Just because I'm critical of SJWs doesn't mean that I condone rape threats or similar bad behavior on forums. Still, these people usually do it because they want a counter reaction, and this is what you give them when you reply to them or express "disgust" about them. So don't feed the trolls! Sorry for breaking this rule by writing this reply.

It's the truth. The first news out of all of the riot locations was "fake news" by the definition being bandied about today. But *that* fake news is protected speech, but this kind of fake news is damned to hell.

The black lives matter stories may rely primarily on false narratives but it is the officially sanctioned media outlets that give voice to those false news stories. The very ones the "fake news" filters are setup to endorse.

In a year-long study, The Washington Post found that the kind of incidents that have ignited protests in many U.S. communities — most often, white police officers killing unarmed black men — represent less than 4 percent of fatal police shootings. Meanwhile, The Post found that the great majority of people who died at the hands of the police fit at least one of three categories: they were wielding weapons, they were suicidal or mentally troubled, or they ran when officers told them to halt.

The article do not refer to "Google Desktop", but to "desktop search". That is, the version of Google Search (i.e. www.google.com) that you see when browsing with a desktop browser, as opposed "mobile search" which is the term for the version of Google Search, you are presented with when browsing from a mobile browser. The two may, and often do, give different results as the user e.g. might want more timely or location based results on mobile, while the user might want more background stories when browsing

Who gets to decide what qualifies as "fake news" vs "real news"? Thus far the bulk of the stories surrounding the subject are largely just the left-leaning mainstream media outlets being butthurt over Trump's win and Bannon giving Breitbart a huge heaping of credibility. This move by the left to censor various news outlets is largely just a response to them getting their comeuppance for their hubris.

In the end let's call this #fakenews trend what it is: an attack on conservative and right-leaning media outl

There is no effort to censor anybody. The purveyors of "fake news" are free to publish whatever they wish. If Google, or Facebook, decides that they will no longer index such sites as if they were reliable sources, that's not censorship.

So when the story is that Trump won the popular vote, that's fake news. It's pretty easy to show, Trump just up and up didn't win the popular vote.

My favorite from the Denver Guardian (to which I might add there is no such organization called the "Denver Guardian" which the "Denver Post" who does exist had to post a story on their site to ensure that no one confused them with this made up organization) of "FBI Agent suspected in Hillary email leaks found dead in apparent murder-suicide." The story went a little something like this for those who forgot, "Investigators believe FBI agent, Michael Brown, 45, shot and killed his 33-year-old wife, Susan Brown"... Needless to say all of those names are made up, the event is made up, no one of any of those names were ever shot/found dead in the Walkerville, MD area or by those names in the state of Maryland period.

One more just to hammer the point, Denzel Washington's support of Donald Trump. First, Denzel Washington openly supported Obama in 2008. Second, the words quoted as coming from Washington were actually someone else's words. Finally, Washington was never public about whom he supported in the 2016 election. He could've supported Clinton or Trump, but the fact remains we don't know because he never made any public comments about it.

Now some might argue that this is all lame crap anyway. Who cares what Denzel Washington thinks, seriously I can't remember the last movie I ever saw him in and he really doesn't strike me as being all that big of a political influencer!? One could say, "just look up the popular vote and those who don't actually research deserve to be treated like idiots." And finally, the Maryland murder some might just reply with, "Well that's what they want you to think!!" Or as I've heard a lot of folks make the argument for, "Well CNN/MSNBC/(insert some liberal scum's name here) are posting stories that aren't based on fact! So who are you going to trust!?"

The thing about it is that you need to take information in aggregate. We don't base scientific fact on just a single result, people shouldn't become homogenized to a single outlet, even though that is what every news site wants you to do when they say things like, "The most trusted source of... ". Additionally, fact outright rids itself and refuses introduction of just false at face value results. Hence the reason we are sorely lacking in theories describing the relationship of unicorns to gravity, all of those theories tend to get ousted from the word go. And yes, one might argue that news is different from scientific fact, because news is subjective or whatever. The thing is, is that news is events that have actually happened. Finding out the exact details of what happened, why it happened, and what possible outcomes from it happening are domains of journalism and I would dare say that that's evidence that while the methods of getting from point A to B in science and journalism are different, they are both ultimately motivated by an underlying desire to find truth.

Is there going to be bias, yes. Of course, there will be bias, it happens in science, it happens in news, it happens in politics, there's always some level of bias and we should always go into something with the understanding that there's going to be that bias there and it's the reason why we need multiple sources of information so that we can see where the points of truth intersect between the different sources. Fake news, is a source where zero of it's points intersect with any source of information and sometimes zero of its points intersect with reality. Yes, it's fun to go full on tin-foil hat and think that everyone is in on it and thus the reason no points intersect is due to some larger conspiracy, but geez I can tell you it gets very tiring working for the Illuminati having to modify all those Tweets and news stories from local vendors to keep all the sheep happy, it's just a ton of work.

Thank you for your post. Sincerely. It's one of the best written things I've read here on this topic, as it has been rehashed dozens of times over the past couple weeks.

People seem to want to focus all the attention on potentially biased news sources or whatever, but as you rightly point out, there are HUGE amounts of actual, literally FAKE news -- where everything in the story is false -- circulating and being passed around. Some of it is from trolls. Some of it is people writing parodies and hoaxes.

A long but good reply. Intentionally completely made-up news is not equivalent to bias or incomplete fact-checking. That is the false equivalence that seems to be being pushed by the trolls here on slashdot.

Re "Who gets to decide what qualifies":
Teams of SJW's, staff from kingdoms, theocracies, cults, Communist nations, celebrities, NGO's, bureaucrats, mil/gov contractors, well funded activist foundations..
Web 2.0 and social media will be turned into a huge safe space.
Then they will come for search terms and stop search engines from finding actual results.
Language limitations and real time corrections in comments, apps, email, browsers to stop people from reading different ideas.
Free speech and fun will

Well for a start, saying that it is left is false, far more accurate to call it the fake left. Liberal is to be open to knowledge and information not to be open to censorship, so not a left message at all, just a fake left message. Exactly the same as those fake conservative message, same deceitful people just hiding behind conservatism, just the same as they hide behind progressivism, when the only thing they believe in is exploiting everything and everyone to serve them.

Always remember that the reason newspapers post story corrections is to convince you that the rest of the information they printed was true. (Not quite sure how that translates to the Internet, but you get the gist).

So what's with all this worry now about "fake news"? Is that supposed to make me think that the mainstream garbage is all real? There is more bullshit and native ads on local, nightly, and 24 hour news then ever, but we are concerned about what someone deems "fake news"? The "fake news" could be substituted for "news we deem fake". The "we" being whoever wants to claim it is with out really having to prove so. It's the DMCA come to the news cycle. This leads to controlled propaganda news that has less truth

So I guess you're arguing here that reality is entirely a media construct? Because otherwise, if actual facts exist, then there is an easy, objective definition for "fake news": false information which is knowingly and deliberately reported in order to influence public opinion. There's an older word for it: "propaganda".

No. intentionally made-up "news" and biased news about actual events are not equivalent. The "fake" news problem is about actual fake stuff; intentionally and knowingly made-up stuff. Like with people in it that don't exist, etc.

When I was trying to find out who really was this Trump guy, an editorial was one of the news links on the Google News front page. I clicked on the link to learn more about him and had to deal with an editorial rant. That really bothered me. It was a clearly marked editorial in the opinion section of the web site. Google's algorithms should be easily able to remove those from the news. If Google News wants to post editorials, they should be clearly marked as editorials in the links. My trust of Google News was damaged and I am much more suspicious of Google News now. They can do better and should.

These are usually marked as "Opinion:", so this is really just a processing mistake. This is obvious to anyone who has ever been to google news, so I don't know why you are pretending that google doesn't mark opinion as such. And you shouldn't "trust" google news for anything!!!! It's just a scraping service. If you don't pay attention to the actual source of the link you are part of the problem.

I have to wonder if our country, or maybe the world, is under a "divide and conquer" attack. An attack that uses psychological warfare operations, through the news systems and media services (including social media).

Or maybe it's just the political parties doing it? Nah... they are not smart enough. 8-P

You forget to add "and the large number of people who are sick and tired of having to debunk uncle bob's emails to nana for her"

Two things:

1. Ironically, my only uncle is named Bob. He's 83 now and finally took me off his mailing list at some point last year. But, yeah, I get it.2. That said, this has nothing to do with people like him. If it did, we would have heard about it before Trump won.

I do wonder if in all this wanting to censor fake news, if they'd censor and remove what has been by far the most wide spread bit of fake news circulating. The bit that Clinton won the popular vote.

To those who want to argue that she did win the popular vote, let me ask you, was the election winner determined by popular vote? If you say no, then I ask you how Clinton could have possibly won something that didn't happen. If you say yes, might I recommend checking your meds.

AC is deranged. Look, I'll make it simple for you. The people voted, and sorry to tell you, but YES, Clinton fucking won a plurality of the votes cast. DEAL WITH IT. That's what I'm doing. I'm not happy about it, but denying it is STUPID. Does it mean she won the election? Of course not. Everybody knows that.

Thank 8 years of race merchandizing for things coming to this point. If President Obama didn't elevate the BLM thugs to the point that every other day, cops are targeted in the streets, it wouldn't have come to this. If President Obama had aggressively taken a bully pulpit to get Black gangsters on the streets off the streets, instead of leaving the po-po to hang out to dry, you wouldn't have seen this backlash

I was actually talking about why the GP's colleagues started being more racist recently that they weren't previously. That is what was affected by the president cheerleading Black thugs in Fergusson, Baltimore and other places